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Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray …
I wonder often about the quality of my prayer life. Do you? No, not about the quality of my prayer life—though I would hope that you would expect a high standard of me—no. What about the quality of your prayers?
It’s one of those areas of our lives where, unless we see a spiritual director regularly who actually asks about it—and some don’t, we tend not to talk much about it. When did you last have a proper conversation about prayer?
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray …
Listen, for a moment, to what Rowan Williams says about prayer. It’s good.
… it doesn’t much matter at first how much time you can give so long as you can give some regular time. The challenge is to find enough time to become quiet enough and still enough. And it’s important to attend to your body. That’s not about exotic yoga techniques. It is how do you use your body in such a way that you can actually centre it to be where you are. Somebody once said that the deepest problem in prayer is not the absence of God but the absence of me. I’m not actually there. My mind is everywhere. So take a few breaths, use a simple formula like the Orthodox, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy”, and sense in that that the line is anchored somewhere in the depths. Familiar formulae and the rhythms that come naturally actually matter quite a lot and I’ve sometimes advised people to try to find a verse of a hymn that means something to them or just a single phrase. It can be ‘Jesu, Lover of my Soul …’ or Immortal, invisible, God only Wise’. Things that people only half remember but phrases that stick, and if you let them, sit in your mind, that’s the beginning of getting there. And when you are there God can relate to you. God cannot speak to you if you are not actually there.
On Thursday evening Rowan is on Radio 3 at 10pm talking about silence—it might well be worth tuning in. But in the meantime, let’s think about what it means—what he means—to be there, to centre ourselves in a place where we are truly ourselves before God. I want you to take a moment, and think, as he suggests, of a phrase from a hymn or something familiar, that you can make your own. Just a few words.
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray.
The thing about God, is when we are open—when we are there—God hears us, and gives to us, more that we can hope for. God—you are always more ready to give, more than either we desire or deserve.
One of the most important influences on Rowan and his understanding of prayer is the 16th century mystic, Theresa of Avila. In her autobiography she describes four levels of prayer, in which she talks of the path of a Christian from a state where we are shouldering the burden of prayer—we feel like we’re doing all the work—to one where God does the work. The levels are sometimes called the Four Waters, by which Teresa means four methods of spiritual irrigation.
Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy.
Teresa invites us to think about ways of watering a garden. The first involves taking a bucket to the well, a process that grows irksome with frequent repetition. Later, we might erect a water wheel with buckets on it. This may help, until we see that it would be more satisfactory to dig an irrigation channel. The simplest way of all to water a garden is through rain.
Listen again to Rowan: to how he interprets this parable of prayer:
We begin with the bucket and the well, laborious concentration, speaking to God, using our imagination, cranking it up. Hard work, but everybody starts there really. After a while you get used to that, and it’s more like the water wheel and the buckets. Your recollections, your sense of focusing on matters of the spirit and the mysteries of God become easier, more natural, though your memory and your imagination aren’t yet fully harnessed. You arrive at some sort of quiet, some sort of inner peace, where your intelligence is stilled a little bit. You become a bit more passive to what’s going on. That’s the water wheel. You’re still doing the rounds, you're still performing the meditational techniques, but it’s getting a bit easier.
But then something else begins to happen. You become more aware that there’s a stream running through the garden, or that God is doing the watering.
And that’s the deeper level still where you’re increasingly aware that it’s not you making the running. And in this state there may be a kind of arrest or seizure of your mental faculties … then there’s heavy rain. God’s action just soaking in, straight down, and all you know is that you are glad to be there under the rain. It’s a fruition, an enjoyment, which you can’t find words for … in this fourth state, you’re united with God.
Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy.
I like to think of it as being drenched with grace.
Next time it rains—and it was raining heavily on Friday morning as I wrote this sermon—next time it rains, imagine that you are out in that rain, becoming drenched through with warm, cleansing rain. That you are soaking it all up. That it is bringing you back to life again, refreshing you. Soft, refreshing rains.
Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy.
It may be that there are deep scars and wounds that you continue to carry—from childhood perhaps, or a sense of failure. Sometimes such things go too deep for words—we’re conscious of them as they cause a dull ache, or sharply remind us in unguarded moments. This parable of prayer helps us to see that God’s grace, like rain, can soak deep into us; that the abundance of his mercy reaches and heals those wounds of soul and spirit, of mind and body. All we need to is ensure that it is truly me that is centred in that place where God is able to find us. Drenched with grace, God is forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid.
It’s like a blessing, isn’t it—a blessing of grace, pouring down upon us. Giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, save through Christ. Blessings of peace of mind, of generosity, patience, kindness. Gentleness. A sense of humour. Those precious gifts that are simply good and true and beautiful.
So prayer. It’s action on our part, yes. But more importantly it’s contemplation. Following Teresa, Rowan says these aren’t so far apart. The last word with him:
When you’ve got used to living in the stream of God’s action, then actually you settle down again. Before you begin meditation, mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers, and trees are trees, and when you start meditation, mountains stop being mountains. When you arrive at enlightenment mountains are mountains again, and rivers are rivers and trees are trees. The journey is to come back to where you started and know the place—know yourself—for the first time.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
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